Lee J. Vance

“ Bain has shown that the love of applause, the feeling of praise, the desire to win the respect of our fellows, even the fear to merit their condemnation, spring from the instinct of sympathy. Indeed, sympathy itself is founded upon the instinct of self-preservation; seen alike in that feeling which impels the members of a community to band together for protection, or in that altruism which prompts the strong to help the weak in their burdens. ”

“ In the terms of evolution, our modern Philanthropy will produce a state of social equilibrium—"a state of human nature and social organization such that the individual has no desires but those which may be satisfied without exceeding his proper sphere of action, while society maintains no restraints but those which the individual voluntarily respects." ”

“ If the question was one of pure ethics, it would be legitimate to inquire, Ought philanthropy to preserve those who, from a mental and physical point of view, are not fit to be preserved? Is it right that the scanty means of subsistence should be at the command of individuals who, by their own conduct, have no claim for relief? In reply, it may be confessed a delicate task to draw the line of demarkation sharply. The warfare waged in ethics has been at last transferred into the domain of sociology. ”

“ Philanthropy does not have to deal alone with poverty and improvidence and its attendant evils. To be born rich and feeble is as bad a fate as to be born poor and capable. There is a kind of material success which, when it destroys men's finer moral and intellectual faculties, is a greater curse than the worst kind of hardship. ”

“ With successive differentiations of individual functions and pursuits there comes an increasing specialization of each differentiated member of society, and hence industrial virtues or vices which the parent fixes for the child by heredity leads to the existence of two very different classes in the community—the rich and the poor, the strong and the weak, the rulers and the ruled. As population becomes denser and denser, the contrast between the classes becomes still more marked, and we find in the cities poverty, hardship, and suffering, face to face with wealth, luxury, and ease. ”

“ There is no possibility of a right understanding of the nature and purpose of Philanthropy without considering the three forces which, by their intricate interaction, combine to make the individual man what he is, natural selection, environment, and heredity. ”

“ Spencer and Mr. Darwin have overlooked—education and just legislation—must be reinstated in the problem. He contends that education abrogates the law of heredity; that good character will result from good education. It has never been satisfactorily explained why education should be the only cure for crime, poverty, and misery. Huxley says, "If I am a knave or a fool, teaching me to read and write will not make me less of either one or the other, unless somebody shows me how to put my reading and writing to good purposes." ”

“ Does scientific philanthropy render the vital competition between man and man more unequal? Or, as a question for the legist, it becomes: What public duty of relief does the State owe to its citizens? It seems to us that these questions constitute the problem of philanthropy in its widest significance, and no apology is needed for treating them in detail. ”

“ Malthus aptly illustrates that all men are Nature's guests; but some are entitled to partake of the viands, while others stand uninvited, no covers being laid for them "at the great banquet of Nature." Here Philanthropy interposes and asks what right have the first guests at free banquet, after they are filled, to keep others from coming for their share? In the struggle for seats at Nature's banquet, shall the strong and vigorous turn back the chairs, and refuse to let the weak partake? ”

“ The principle of selection with the survival of the fittest encourages the multiplication of those persons best fitted for the conditions of life, by carrying off the weak and sickly who are least fitted for those conditions; and, if left to work without check, it would result in the slow and steady improvement of the individual faculties and race characteristics, by purifying the blood, invigorating the energies, and strengthening the social instincts. But we civilized men, says Mr. Darwin, do our utmost to check the process of elimination ”

“ Darwin labored under the same misconception, for in the "Descent of Man" he says that the aid we feel impelled to give to the helpless and incompetent is mainly the result of sympathy, originally acquired as part of the social instincts, and subsequently rendered more widely diffused. Thus, the necessary datum of ethics lies in the principle, that each man must recognize and respect the rights and claims of another, equally with his own. It follows, then, that benevolence and justice spring from the same moral sentiment which is the foundation of every form of philanthropy. ”

“ THE nature and purpose of our modern philanthropy—indeed, the inquiry whether or not utilitarian or altruistic considerations should inspire and control our actions—constitute an important and most instructive study in sociology. ”

“ All modern relief has proceeded upon the ground that it is the duty of those who have supported themselves to support others, and the good citizen is obliged to shoulder the burdens of the good-for-nothing in addition to his own. ”

“ To suppose that education will supply those inherited faculties of moral intuition that are missing—"certain emotions responding to right and wrong"—is parallel with the supposition that the individual may be born again by a kind of mental baptism. The true effect of intellectual training is to clothe heredity with renewed power, giving the children a moral vantage over the parent, and enabling them to leave to their descendants a much further development of the faculties thus fostered, and a still higher power in producing beneficial variations which are a blessing to the race. ”

“ In regard to the influence which philanthropy exercises upon the environment, Mr. Darwin's argument may be turned back upon him, says M. Fouillée, and he proposes his theorem—i.e., "the normal conditions most favorable to mankind are to assume the development and selection of a majority of the strong, while saving only a minority of the weak." Such, in their strongest terms, are the arguments brought forward against a truly scientific philanthropy. ”

“ The principle upon which the sentimental school is founded is co-operation, whereby the weak in body or in mind, without struggle, share alike with the more vigorous and prudent. The scientific sociologist starts with the competitive theory of life, whereby in an advancing society, with the agglomeration of population in great centers, it is everywhere seen that industrial virtues are more and more the high rewards of mental and physical vigor, while poverty and pain are the attendant penalties attached to weakness, idleness, and imprudence. ”

“ The difference between the Humanitarian, who is looking at things as they should be, and the sociologist, who deals with things as they are, represents accurately the distance between the Ideal and the Real. The true philanthropist will take that golden mean,—a man who, while maintaining the just equipoise between the emotional, non-discursive side, and his intellectual and analytic nature, will give wide range to his finer sympathies, "so uniting philanthropic energy with philosophic calm." ”

“ Philanthropy is founded in sentiment, and in the desire on the part of the strong, the favored, and the fortunate, to assure the comfort of the weak, unfavored, and unfortunate. It becomes scientific when those severe and exact logical methods of procedure—the indispensable prerequisites to a thorough knowledge of the preparatory studies of biology and psychology—are used in determining the effects of the laws of physical and moral heredity with natural selection on the increase and movement of population. ”

“ Darwin, man scans with scrupulous care the character and pedigree of his horses and cattle before he matches them, but, when he comes to his own marriage, he rarely, or never, takes any such care. By giving the feeble a better chance to propagate their kind, philanthropy is only filling the world with the "infirm so called, to whom philanthropy is accustomed to give assistance," as well as keeping out the vigorous, who, it is assumed, will give assistance to the feeble members. [1] The harsh result springing from a misguided benevolence is seen in another way. ”

“ Nature scatters with as lavish a hand as her penalties. The philanthropist will show us that the hereditary vices which the parent establishes for his children and his children's children meet in the long run with certain punishment. ”

“ The process of elimination is nothing more nor less than the slow but steady selection of those who give evidence of their better adaptation to those external conditions into which they are born. No matter whether individuals survive, either for their mental or for their physical vigor, these qualities, for which they are selected, once gained and afterward enhanced by increased selection and heredity, become the varied faculties of the men and women of to-day. ”

“ The two widely different systems of social science—the one treating the topic by utilitarian methods, the other by the way of altruism—is the logical outcome of the rival claims of utility and intuition to be considered the rightful premises in all moral differences. To the one it is objected that self-interest is developed entirely at the expense of natural sympathy; against the latter it is urged that the feelings of sentiment are allowed to control in shaping the policy of public relief, instead of using the slower and more cautious methods of reason. ”

“ The pauper, the insane, the deaf-mute, and the blind, appeal to charity; but these juvenile offenders excite both pity for their own condition, and solicitude for their potential influence for evil in society. ”

“ In his address before the Academy, in 1880, Victor Sardou said that sympathy impelled men to apply a remedy before they ascertained the cause of the disease—to trust in the efficacy of panaceas, rather than in the vis medicatrix. This he called sentimental Philanthropy. The conflict between the sentimental and scientific methods in social science has come from the intrusion of what may be called the sympathetic Bias—that is, the former class allow their emotions to predominate over their judgments, while the latter subordinate their feelings of sympathy to their faculty of reason. ”

“ The laborer out of work says it is the duty of society to find work for him; but surely it is his duty as a member of that society to find work for every other unemployed man. [5] As an organized business, with paid executive officers, numerous employés, and bureaus of distribution, modern philanthropy has become a thriving profession. ”

“ The sentimentalist employs in sociology the empiric method; in ethics he builds upon intuition; in political economy he favors the principle of co-operation. The innumerable Reforms, Leagues, and Associations are evidences of the unscientific nature of the remedy administered for deep-seated evils. Therefore, all measures of public relief must depend for their success on the correctness and certainty with which the laws of mental and biological science are applied ”

“ It is difficult, therefore, to exaggerate the harm caused by the artificial preservation of the feeblest upon the physical status of future generations. The great harm consists in still further separating classes, and thus creating great inequalities of condition in every society. The artificial preservation of the feeblest is the artificial widening of those lines which Nature draws between one person and another ”

“ Without one word of displeasure to those tender-hearted philanthropists who have committed grievous errors by short-sighted plans, let us speak with pleasure of the labors of Arkwright, Stephenson, Whitney, Bessemer, Siemens, and others—scientific philanthropists, who have been all the time "weaving the web of concord among nations." ”

“ Philanthropy insists that there is plenty of room at Nature's table, and that all men shall participate in a feast where priority gives no one any exclusive right. Vita sedat, uti conviva satur.
These arguments seem at first glance unpitying, especially to tender-hearted people, who deplore the harsh manner in which Nature punishes ignorance and incompetency as rigorously as froward disobedience. ”

“ It is to be observed, in this connection, that any character which helps in any way its possessor is liable to be seized upon, and in terms of sexual selection it may be stated that variations which appear first in either sex early in life are transmitted to both sexes; but variations which appear in either—late in life are transmitted to one sex only. A disease may be sexually limited—as gout, when caused by intemperance during manhood, is developed in the sons in a more striking way than in the daughters. ”

“ The novelist, the littérateur, and the doctrinaire find plenty of facts at hand to prove the enormous increase of human wretchedness. When social evils are prominently before the people, these persons either rush off to the Legislature to have a new law passed, or they get together a score of individuals and form a new charitable Association. ”

“ Spencer urges, "that children bear likenesses to their progenitors in character and capacity, if he holds that men, whose parents and grand-parents were habitual criminals, have tendencies as good as those of men whose parents and grand-parents were industrious and upright, he may consistently hold that it matters not from what families in a society the successive generations descend. ”

“ The Government should not step in and provide for the foolish improvidence of the father. To do so would only act as an encouragement to the lower classes to multiply at a faster rate than the better members of society. ”

“ The zealous educationist is too apt to forget that the weak and vicious man is fighting single-handed for the mastery over perhaps a score of evil-minded ancestors. "We can make education compulsory, but we can not compel the conscience. ”